17 Mar 2014

Tutorial - Rainbow Butterfly Wings

Happy Monday, my lovelies! How was your weekend? I hope it was wonderful! Mine was fairly laid back, and filled with the GORGEOUS California sun! I still can’t believe that I’m living in a state where it’s sunny and not snowing in the middle of March. ;)

Obviously, with the beautiful weather surrounding us and the arrival of spring peeking up, I had to do some springtime nails! So let’s get started with this week’s tutorial:

Rainbow Butterfly Wings

Step 1: Supplies! This manicure requires a LOT of colors! But if you only do your wings in one color, then you’ll only need a few (depending on whether or not you do ombre like I did). In terms of supplies, you will need:

Clear base and top coat

Nail polish in the wing color you’d prefer (and a second shade of the same color for ombre) (I did purple, green, pink, blue, and yellow)

Step 3: Paint it! Paint your first color on your nails. For me, this means painting each separate nail with the lighter shade of the ombre color.

Step 4: Ombre it! Now take your sponge, drip the polish colors onto your paper/plastic, and get to work on getting those nail gradients! For more info on ombre nails, check out my tutorial here.

Step 5: Wing it (literally)! Now let’s get started on the borders of the wings. Take out your black nail polish and paint a corner of your nail tip diagonally.

Now paint the other side, making the two ends meet in a curve at the bottom.

Paint a small mound between the two black sections, creating two curves at the nail’s tip.

Repeat this process on the tips of all the other nails.

Step 6: Line it! Now take your small paintbrush or toothpick and paint thin black lines from the peaks of the black tips to the cuticle of the nail.

Step 7: Dot it! Now take out your white polish and paint small white dots at the black tips.

Step 8: Finish it! Seal your manicure with a clear top coat, clean up the edges of the nails, and voila! A gorgeous butterfly wing manicure to get you into the spring-time mood!

I hope you like this tutorial! I think the pinky nails look the most like “real” butterfly wings (Monarch butterflies!), but the best thing about this technique is that you can make wings in any color you like.

I loved making this manicure, and it’s had great feedback from others! If you do it as well, I bet you’ll get tons of compliments on your nails too. ;)